


Content.

by untrueusername



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M, FTM, Homophobia, Kinda, Lars is definitely dumb at least, Trans!Lars - Freeform, Transphobia, Well - Freeform, kinda angsty, mention of emotional abuse towards a minor, more hurt/comfort though, there's some swearing but whatever they're #teens, they're dumb and they love each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 20:51:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17815304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untrueusername/pseuds/untrueusername
Summary: Sadie finds Lars somewhere she didn't think he'd be.





	Content.

**Author's Note:**

> WOOPS this was only supposed to be like,,, 500 words or something but I really liked writing it so I just kept going. I have a few ideas to further it if you guys want me to, but it's pretty cute just as a one-shot so idk.  
> Also, yeah I know I write angsty stuff about transguys all the time but l e a v e m e b e  
> Just so y'all know this is kind of a side-story I wrote off my series The Story of Trans!Lars which you can find here:   
> https://archiveofourown.org/series/1280507   
> and part one is here:  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/17818793   
> Enjoy!

Sadie walked into her high school at 8:00pm, hoping to god that the art room would be unlocked for her. Her art final was due tomorrow and although she had had all of class time to finish it up earlier that day, it just hadn’t been enough. The teacher told her that if she could, she could come after school hours to work on it and he would leave the door unlocked for her, but Sadie had estimated she’d get there at least an hour earlier than she had. Lars hadn’t shown up for their shift after school that afternoon, meaning it took her way longer than usual to clean up and close for the night. Normally he’d at least call and fake sick, but today she didn’t even gotten a text. She wasn’t exactly worried for him, more just annoyed.

As she walked quietly over to the other side of the building to get to the art room, it really hit her how creepy the high school was at night. All of the lights were off and although she probably could have turned them on herself, there was something about the vibe of the building that told her she shouldn't, so she didn’t. Instead, she used her phone’s flashlight to navigate the long, dark hallways. She almost thought that using a flashlight made the darkness even more unsettling, but when she briefly turned the light off to check her theory she realized that she had been terribly, horribly wrong, and quickly turned it back on.

As she went down the final hallway to the art room, she saw under the room’s door that the lights were on, hopefully meaning that the art teacher had left the door unlocked for her despite her tardiness. However, as she got closer to it, she began to hear quiet cries coming from the room. This stopped her dead in her tracks as her blood ran cold, eyes widening with fear. 

She stood there for a moment, making sure that she was really hearing what she thought she was, before her mind turned to what it could be. 

_Relax, Sadie_ , her mind told her. _What are you, 8? You shouldn’t believe in monsters lurking in the dark anymore. It’s probably just… a kid in the high school after hours?_ _Besides, you’ve seen much stranger things in Beach City than a monster at the end of a dark hallway._

However, another part of her began to argue. 

_ That’s the point! _ Her anxieties yelled. _ There are much worse things than monsters in this town. What if it’s one of those… things that Steven’s always fighting?  _

Her mind filled with images of horrid gem-beasts that had terrorized Beach City more times than she could count.

_...but what if it’s hurting someone? _ Another voice quietly said in the back of her head. She listened more intently for the cries, and it… definitely  _ sounded _ human. 

With that final thought, she puffed her chest out and clenched her fists. If someone was being hurt, she had to at least try to help them!

She began to march towards the door at a much quicker pace than she had before. When she reached it, she took a deep breath, and then kicked the door in, jumping into the room with a battle cry and her fists raised, ready to fight.

Instead of finding a horrible monster attacking someone, however, she found an absolutely fucking terrified Lars.

He scrambled back from her, falling onto his butt and throwing his arms up in front of his face in defense. 

“DON’T HURT ME, PLEASE!” he yelped, his eyes squinted shut. 

Processing who was in front of her, Sadie’s face softened, her battle stance relaxing. 

“Lars?” She said, bewildered. The teen opened one eye to look at her before putting his arms down and sitting up from where he had fallen on the ground. 

“S-Sadie?” 

Without the boy’s arms in front of him, Sadie saw the redness of his eyes and the tear streaks running down his cheeks, fear clear in his pupils. He quickly rubbed his face, trying to make it look as if he hadn’t just been crying, and stood up, his usual snarky persona taking over him once again.

“What the fuck, Sadie?” He crossed his arms and put his weight on one leg. 

“I… Uh…” Sadie’s brain was still trying to process that she wasn’t in immediate danger from a gem monster, and that the whimpers she heard had just been her coworker crying in their high school’s art room at 8pm. “I just…”

“You just what?” 

Sadie had nothing to say to that, so she didn’t say anything, instead just staring at the boy, who continued to make irritated eye contact with her. 

A moment passed where the two just looked at each other in silence, before Sadie spoke up.

“Are… are you okay, Lars?” She said it so quietly, Lars almost didn’t hear her, despite the absolute silence of the building around them. However, he did hear her, and he was startled by her question. His confident facade faltered for a moment, his eyes filling with panic and anxiety, before it was replaced with anger.

“What do you mean, ‘are you okay’? You just leapt into the art room in the middle of the night about to beat the shit out of anything you saw! Are  _ you _ okay, Sadie?”

Sadie harrumphed at this, beginning to get angry herself. “I thought I was alone! I saw that the light was on and I heard…  _ something _ and I thought one of those monster things Steven fights was in here! Anyways, I came here to finish up my art final. What are you doing here, huh? You don’t even take art. And why weren’t you at work today? I had to do everything by myself, Lars! You could have at least left a fucking message!”

Lars took a small step back at the sudden outburst from the girl, and fell silent.

“I… I was…”

He looked around the art room, seemingly hoping to find an excuse among the paint cans and colored pencils, before tears began to fill his eyes. Sadie’s anger rushed out of her body at the sight, and she hesitated before hurrying over to the boy. As soon as she hugged him, he fell apart, sobbing into her shoulder and crying about how sorry he was for everything. It was a ridiculous sight, with Lars being twice as tall as Sadie, having to hunch over to even reach her shoulders, but neither of them cared. They only wanted to be with each other in that moment. 

After a minute or two of Lars babbling apologies and covering Sadie’s Big Donut uniform in snot and tears, he lifted his head up and wiped his eyes, not making eye contact with her. 

“...Lars?” Sadie questioned. She slowly raised her right hand up to his face and he flinched away from it, before she gently moved his head to face her. He finally looked into her eyes, brown meeting brown, and Sadie could see the guilt and humiliation in them. 

“Talk to me.” 

Sadie said it so gently and kindly that Lars almost began to cry again, before shaking his head and sighing. 

“I thought there wouldn’t be anyone else here,” he started. “Everywhere else in the town there’s always someone there or something happening, but here,” he looked around the art room,”it’s always so calm and, and quiet at night.” He paused and looked down at his hands. “Plus, I’ve been having a hard time with my parents recently. Well, worse than usual anyway.”

Sadie knew that his parents had been shitty to him for a few years by now, but didn’t realize that it was bad enough for him to be hiding in the high school at night to avoid them. They had been good parents for most of his childhood, but when he came out to them as transgender they treated him… differently. They still  _ said _ they loved him, but they constantly demeaned him and got angry at him over nothing. It didn’t help that they refused to call him their son, instead calling him  _ she _ and  _ Laramie _ , even in public in front of people who had only ever known him as male. Plus, after a few drinks his father would get… mean. 

Sadie took Lars’ hands in her own before he started speaking again.

“It’s just, it’s hard enough having so many awful thoughts going through your own head every day, but when your family, your own  _ parents _ tell you them too? It’s shitty. My dad had too much to drink tonight and he kept on telling me how I’ll never be a boy, I’ll always just be a perverted lesbian. He was saying so many terrible things and I just…” a tear fell down from the boys’ brown eyes. “I just left. I didn’t say anything, I just ran out the door and I wound up here.”

Sadie silently let go of one of his hands and reached up to wipe his tear away. Instead of flinching this time, however, Lars leaned into the touch, closing his eyes, and Sadie held his jaw in her hand, bringing it towards her face. Without a word, they two leaned towards each others, and their lips met, sparks flying behind Sadie’s eyes. 

It was a light, loving kiss, and it was over in seconds, but it felt like it lasted years to Sadie. As they both leaned away to look at each other, their eyes were full of stars.

“That was…” Lars began, pausing.

“Yeah.” Sadie finished.

The two stood there for a moment, holding each other and just looking into each others’ eyes, before Lars broke the eye contact.

“Thank you, Sadie. I’m sorry for freaking out earlier.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m sorry for nearly punching you in the face when I came in.”

The two giggled, eyes closed and foreheads leaning against each other, before they fell into a comfortable silence. 

As the night went on, Lars decided to stay in the art room while Sadie finished up her final to ‘keep her company’, although both of them knew it was more than that. They didn’t talk about the kiss, instead talking about a new horror movie Sadie wanted to see coming out or a band Lars had found out about recently that’d be visiting Beach City soon. 

As Sadie finished up her painting around 11:00, she could tell Lars was getting anxious. He knew that once she was done, he’d either be alone in the art room for who knows how long or he’d have to go back home and face his parents’ wrath for running out of the house so suddenly.

Reading his thoughts, Sadie spoke up, not looking away from her last few brushstrokes.

“You know,” she started. “You could come with me and sleep over at my house tonight.”

Lars’ eyes widened at the proposition, and Sadie looked over to him. 

“N-No! Nothing like that. Just… a place to stay. With a friend. Nothing… suggestive.”

Lars relaxed and chucked, his hand raising to scratch the back of his head. 

“Okay, good. That would be… that would be nice, Sades.”

They once again fell into a comfortable silence as Lars’ anxiety began to drain away and Sadie put her signature onto her piece, putting it onto the drying rack for the night. 

“Alrighty,” she said, after she had cleaned everything up and put everything away. “You ready to go?”

Lars nodded his head, and followed Sadie out of the room, shutting off the lights and locking the door behind them. 

Sadie realized as they walked down the dark halls together that it wasn’t nearly as scary as it had been earlier now that Lars was with her. She knew logically that if there  _ was _ something dangerous lurking around them that attacked them she would have to be the one to fight it while Lars hid somewhere or got captured or something, but there was something about having the boy near her that calmed her down. 

At one point, there was a creak that came from somewhere distant in the building and Lars instinctively reached out to grab Sadie’s hand. She couldn’t see him very clearly in the dark, but she could tell he was blushing at his reaction. Instead of letting go, though, she instead squeezed his hand and he squeezed back, and although there wasn’t anything for him to be afraid of, they continued to hold hands all the way out of the school. 

As they walked down the streets of their town to get to Sadie’s house, they were happy to find that it was late enough that there wasn’t anybody around. Nothing loud, nothing lively, just the distant sound of waves crashing and a perfect view of the stars. 

After a few minutes of walking, Sadie made a decision, and turned a corner in the opposite direction of her house.

“W-wait, where are we going? Isn’t your house the other way?” Lars said, confused.

“I’m kidnapping you,” Sadie said, laughing.

Lars laughed with her (albeit a bit nervously) and didn’t question her further, instead tightening his grip on her hand as they walked further away from their town.

Eventually, they reached a small hill bout a mile out of town, and Sadie led Lars up it. When they reached the top, Sadie let go of Lars’ hand and sat down cross legged. After a beat, she looked up at the boy with big eyes and softly patted the grass next to her. Lars blushed, before sitting down as well, his legs bunched up in front of him. Sadie leaned back, her head turned up to the stars, and slowly, Lars relaxed and stargazed with her.    
“I didn’t know about this place,” Lars said quietly. “I’ve never been here before. It’s beautiful.”

Sadie knew he couldn’t see her in the pitch black, but she smiled at him anyways. 

“I was hoping you’d like it. I sometimes go here when I’m stressed or something to calm down and be alone. I thought that maybe you might like it for the same reason.”

Sadie couldn’t see Lars, but she heard the rustle of grass as he turned his head to look at her. 

“You… you come here to be alone, but you showed it to me anyways? Why would you do that?”

Sadie chuckled. “Well, I wouldn’t mind not being alone if I was not-being-alone with you.”

The two blushed, beaming at each other in the darkness, before they both looked back up to the stars above them.

They stayed like that silently for about an hour before Sadie began to hear soft snores from Lars’ direction. She laughed to herself, and continued to stare up at the stars for a while, but soon she too began to nod off. 

Before she fell asleep, Sadie decided to try to get herself and Lars back home before it got to be too late. She sat up and gently tried to jostle Lars awake, but to no avail. He was out cold. Instead, Sadie picked the teen up piggy-back style and carried him, snores and all, all the way back to her house, down her basement stairs, and plopped him onto her bed. 

As she tucked him under her blanket, she stared at him lovingly. She rarely got to see him so… calm. Relaxed. It made her heart happy to know that she was the reason for it. Just before she was going to go lay down on the couch, she hesitated before leaning down and giving him a peck on the forehead. 

“Goodnight, Lars.” 

They boy scrunched up his face for a moment at the contact before relaxing once again, a content smile spreading on his face.

Sadie smiled down at him affectionately before walking across her room with a spare blanket and pillow, falling onto her couch and snuggling into herself.

Content.


End file.
